Transfer Win 7 System Files to another HD

[BigJerd886]

Hello,

I recently built a new computer and, mistakenly, had both hard drives plugged into the board when I installed windows. I was having quite a bit of difficulty getting windows to install because of some memory problems and when I finally got it to work I accidently put the 100 MB's of System Files on one of my hard drives and the rest of the partition on the other drive.

I wanted it all on my new 1.5 TB drive and instead the System Files were loaded onto my old 320 GB drive from my last computer. I'm only using it as a storage drive anyways.

I was wondering if there was an easy way to move the System Files onto the 1.5 TB drive without having to format the drive and start over. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This was my first pc build and I learned a few lessons the hard way.

 

[Combat Wombat]

If the system files or any files that you wanna backup have an OS, just run it up and transfer them to a external device and then load up your OS on your new HDD and transfer your files over..

 

[hang-the-9]

Look here http://www.mydigitallife.info/hack-to-remove-100-mb-system-reserved-partition-when-installing-windows-7/

and this also http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409

What C.W. is talking about is not what you were looking for, looks like he's just saying how to move files in general, not the little system partition Win 7 makes.

Note that I would not play around with these procedures unless you are OK with scrapping things and starting over anyway if this fails. Meaning do not do this on a drive that has data you need without backups.

 

[MrBig55]

There is some guides on the net to move these files over any other partition so that you can then encrypt the partition using TrueCrypt (yes it does tell you that this tiny 100MB partition cannot be encrypted...). But there is no need at all for this small partition. You can just delete it (or format the whole drive) if you wish. Windows don't need it at all. Promise!

Anyways next time you install Windows, know that there is a way to install it without that tiny partition:

At the screen where you can choose which partition to install to, just select advanced, then make the partitions you need to. Then when you did every partition needed, format it. Then click next. Windows will tell you it needs to make a 100MB partition with boot files on it. So click OK, then previous so that you're back at the partition screen. You then delete that newly created 100MB partition, then Next again. It won't make it back. It'll go to the next steps.

Proceed to install Windows normally, then one day when you'll be using a partitioning software, you could just merge that 100MB to any partition you wish. It's not a priority since 100MB is nothing to be worried about.

Voilà! It is that simple to install Windows without that tiny 100MB boot partition. Oh well next time you'll know how to do it at the install time